News tagged ‘smartphone’

Last week Motorola filed another complaint in a U.S. District Court in Delaware. Current company's approach is to invalidate 11 patents that were awarded to NeXT Software and Apple (which are both known to be founded by Steve Jobs).

It is said in Motorola's suit that these patents were named in Apple's complaints against HTC and other handset makers that use Google's Android OS in their smartphones. That explains why company wants to prove that these patents are invalid.

This week the letemsvetemapplem.eu posted a couple of videos, which compare the iPhone 4 and fourth-generation iPod touch, as well as the iPhone 3GS and iPad. The iPhone 4, latest iPod touch and iPad all sport Apple's custom A4 processor, though the iPhone 4 has twice the RAM as the 256MB found in the iPod touch and iPad.

Today smartphones perform the same functions as our personal computers. They load the websites, take pictures, send and receive e-mails, reproduce high-definition videos and have a lot of other useful features.

Since the iPhone 4 has been launched, many users are eagerly awaiting the new iPhone 5, as they start speculating on what this fruitful company plans to add to its device. What can it really do?

It is obvious that the iPhone 5 should have iOS 5 or 6, which will be pre-installed on it. But let's briefly retreat from reality...

Intel will increase its presence in the mobile phone market with the announced $1.4 billion acquisition of the wireless division of Infineon, a significant component supplier for Apple's iPhone.

Intel and Infineon announced that they had agreed to the deal, in which Intel will own the wireless business of Germany's Infineon Technologies in exchange for $1.4 billion in cash. The deal pertains to a range of wireless technologies, including Wi-Fi, 3G, WiMAX and LTE. Infineon makes the baseband chip found in the iPhone, and the company has had a strong partnership with Apple, supplying chipsets for Apple's smartphone since it was first released in 2007.

Who knew that credit card processing would be the new hotness for smartphones? The Square mobile payment system has been making waves by letting small businesses receive credit card payment directly on their smartphones. Now, mophie and Intuit are looking to get in on the same action with their Complete Card Solution for iPhone. It's a $179 package that includes both mophie's card-swiping phone case and the 3.0 version of Intuit's GoPayment app. After a quick application users are said to be approved (or, erm, declined) within 15 minutes and can immediately start accepting payments.

A single account can also cover up to 50 users, meaning an entire sales team could be equipped with these devices. But this case, which encrypts every credit card number before it gets to the phone, will only work with the iPhone 3G/S.

GumballTech blogger Brian has used the standard iPhone 4 keyboard to break the world texting record, according to a video posted on YouTube.

After reading yesterday about Melissa Thompson, a 27-year-old British woman who used a Samsung Galaxy S smartphone and its Swype keyboard to set a world record of 25.94 seconds, Brian decided to test his skill.

The official phrase you need to type is: "the razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human". Brian typed this phrase and started and stopped the timer himself in 21.8s. Both his and Thompson's time have yet to be confirmed by Guinness World Records.

Today ChangeWave Research revealed the results of its survey on iPhone 4. 213 new handset owners were questioned in a few weeks after the launch of the latest Apple's smartphone, between July 19 and 28. Here is a list of facts that were revealed:

In June 6.3% of iPhone 3GS owners experienced dropped calls, in July only 5.2% of those who use iPhone 4 had dropped a call at least once. ChangeWave Research's vice president Paul Carton says that means that iPhone 4 is quiet better at making calls:

"Despite all of the issues surrounding the antenna, in actuality iPhone 4 owners reported experiencing fewer dropped calls on the average than iPhone 3GS owners".

Along with a special press conference, dedicated to iPhone 4 antenna issue, Apple published a special page about the problem (here = http://www.apple.com/antenna/). You may remember we wrote about a series of videos posted on this page, where the company tried to convince everybody that almost every smartphone has an antenna issue. RIM's BlackBerry Bold 9700, Samsung's Omnia II, HTC's Droid Eris and Nokia's N97 were taken as examples. Now these videos are deleted from the Apple's site, though they are still available at the company's official YouTube channel.

After the press conference Apple's competitors claimed that their phones do not experience signal attenuation as much as the iPhone 4 and were dissatisfied by Apple's way of solving the antenna issue.

Recently tech journalist Stephen Fenech wrote an interesting iPhone 4 review for Australian Daily Telegraph. Besides saying that iPhone 4 is "a massive jump" in the smartphone industry, Fenech also tried to reproduce the antenna issue. To make sure his results are correct he used his phone on 6 different Australian carriers - Optus, Telstra, Vodafone and 3 other networks in different parts of Sydney. Here is his conclusion:

"I tried the 'death grip' on the bottom left while making test calls in areas I knew to have weaker reception and the times I did manage to reduce the signal bars... my calls were still not affected. The worst thing that happened was a web page I was loading timed out but after refreshing it came up fine. I even managed to watch a YouTube video over 3G while in the 'death grip.'"

Fenech also added that the "death grip" is unnatural and iPhone 4 call quality was significantly improved in comparison to iPhone 3GS.

Apple’s iPhone 4 handset is scheduled to hit Canadian stores this Friday. According to a recent report by CBC, Canadian customers will have the option of buying the phone unlocked, directly from Apple:

Here is an interesting video demonstrating an iPhone speed test across all four generations of the smartphone (iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4).

It’s fantastic to see how far the speed of the iPhone has advanced. As you’d expect, the iPhone 4 is obviously the fastest, closely followed by the iPhone 3GS. Interestingly, the difference between the 3GS and 3G is pretty big, as is the difference between the iPhone 3G and the first-gen handset.

This week developers started receiving Microsoft’s test units, which will allow them to test the performance of their apps for WP7 instead of using an emulator. The test smartphones are produced by Samsung and LG and have a Technical Preview version of Windows Phone 7, and guys at NewsGeek decided to compare its browser speed with iPhone 3GS' that runs on iOS 4.

Since the difference in speed is so huge it is noted that both of the phones used 3G network (not Wi-Fi) and iPhone 3GS is a completely finished product, while Samsung's test unit is a prototype with an unfinished OS that is still in development.

Newsgeek also found Internet Explorer in the Windows Phone 7 to be "surprisingly competent and quick" though it was mostly built off of IE7's desktop version.

As you know, recently Steve Jobs gave a promise that every customer that has problems with antenna in iPhone 4 will have a free bumper case. But that didn't stop Samsung to continue mocking on the situation. The company's latest advertisement of Galaxy S smartphone just says "Hello", but those who experienced antenna issue on iPhone 4 will clearly get the hint.